After gaining a BA and MPhil at the University of Nottingham, and a stint at Cornell University in the USA, Iain Boyd Whyte pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge. A DAAD pre-doctoral studentship funded a year of study in the then West Berlin, which had a lasting impact on his subsequent research interests and academic career. An early indication of his interest in German history and culture was the award, subsequent to the PhD, of an MA with distinction in German at the University of Leeds. A fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and a Getty Scholar, he taught from 1988 to 2020 in the School of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh, with several interruptions for fellowships and secondments to institutions in the USA, including the Getty Foundation, Northwestern University, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, where he was Kress Professor in 2015-2016. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and chaired the Sectional Committee on Arts and Humanities (1999-2002 and 2018-2021). As a Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland he chaired the Architectural Selection Committee and Design Jury for the £28m Playfair Project (1999-2000). From 2008 to 2010 he was Vice President of the Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art, and from 2010 to 2016 served as chair of RIHA, the International Association of Research Institutes in the History of Art. Committed to the importance of translation in the arts and humanities, and a practising translator himself, Whyte founded the journal Art in Translation in 2009 with generous funding from the Getty Foundation. 

Publications

Monographs and edited books

Bruno Taut, Baumeister einer neuen Welt (Hatje, 1981)

Bruno Taut and the Architecture of Activism (Cambridge University Press, 1982)

Tilmann Buddensieg, Industriekultur: Peter Behrens and the AEG, trans. and intro. (MIT Press, 1984)

The Crystal Chain Letters: Architectural Fantasies by Bruno Taut and His Circle, trans. and ed. (MIT Press, 1985)

Emil Hoppe, Marcel Kammerer, Otto Schönthal: Three Architects from the Master Class of Otto Wagner (MIT Press, 1989)

Art and Power: Europe under the Dictators, 1930– 1945 (exh. cat., Thames & Hudson, 1995)

Hendrik Petrus Berlage: Thoughts on Style, 1886–1909, trans. and ed., with Wim de Wit (Getty Center Publications, 1996)

Die Gläserne Kette: Eine expressionistische Korrespondenz über die Architektur der Zukunft (Ernst & Sohn, 1996)

John Fowler, Benjamin Baker: The Forth Bridge, with Angus J. Macdonald and Colin Baker (Menges, 1997)

Modernity and the Spirit of the City, intro. and ed. (Routledge, 2003)

The Man-Made Future: Planning, Education, and Design in Mid‑20th Century Britain, ed. (Routledge,2006)

Das Erhabene in Wissenschaft und Kunst: Über Vernunft und Einbildungskraft ed. (with Roald Hoffmann, 1981 Nobel Prize Laureate for Chemistry; Suhrkamp, 2010); English edition Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science (Oxford University Press, 2011) 

Metropolis Berlin, trans. and ed., with David Frisby (University of California Press, 2012)

Hot Art, Cold War: European Writing on American Art, trans. and ed. with Claudia Hopkins (Routledge, 2021)

Metropole Wien, ed. with Ruth Hanisch and Harald Stühlinger (Birkhäuser, 2024)

Selected articles

"Expressionistische Architektur-Der philosophische Kontext", in: Das Abenteuer der Ideen: Architektur und Philosophie seit der industriellen Revolution, exh. cat. (Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, 1984)

"Modernist Dioscuri? Otto Wagner and Hendrik Petrus Berlage around 1890," in: Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity (Getty Center Publications, 1993)

"Berlin 1870-1945: An Introduction framed by Architecture", in: Irit Rogoff (ed), The Divided Heritage: Themes and Problems in German Modernism (Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 223-252

"Antonio Sant'Elia un Wagnerschüler in absentia", in: Antonio Sant'Elia: l'architettura disegnata, exhibition catalogue (Venice Biennale, 1991)

German language edition of catalogue as: Antonio Sant'Elia: Gezeichnete Architektur 1906-1916 (Frankfurt: Deutsches Architektur-Museum, 1992)

"Otto Dix's Germany: From Wilhelmine Reich to East/West Divide", in: Otto Dix, exh. cat. (Tate Gallery, 1992)

"Modernist Dioscuri? Otto Wagner and Hendrik Petrus Berlage around 1890", in: Otto Wagner: Reflections on the Raiment of Modernity (Getty Center Publications, 1993)

"The Expressionist Sublime", in: Expressionist Utopias: Paradise, Metropolis, Architectural Fantasy, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1993); reprinted under same title (University of California Press, 2001), and in: "The Expressionist Sublime", in: The Built Surface: Volume 2, Architecture and the Pictorial Arts from Romanticism to the 21st century (Ashgate, 2001)

"The Sublime", in: The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990, exh. cat. (Royal Scottish Academy; Hayward Gallery; Haus der Kunst Munich, 1994/1995)

"Stadt und Land: Patrick Geddes in Edinburgh", in: Architektur als Kunst (Sautter & Lackmann, 1995)

"Wien um 1910", in: Shaping the Great City: Modern Architecture in Central Europe 1890-1937 / Mythos Großstadt: Architektur und Stadtbaukunst Zentraleuropa 1890-1937, exh. cat. (Prestel, 1999)

"Clive Entwistle: Dreams of the Crystal Palace", in: Twentieth-Century Architecture and its Histories (Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2000)

"Futurist Architecture", in: International Futurism in Arts and Literature (Walter de Gruyter, 2000)

"Taut visionario", in: Bruno Taut 1880-1938 (Electa, 2001)

"Hitler's Berlin", in: Comparative Criticism 23: Humanist Traditions in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

"Introduction", in: Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the Life of the City

(MIT Press, 2002)

"Modernity and Architecture", and "The Expressionist Utopia" in: Tracing Modernity: Manifestations of the Modern in Architecture and the City (Routledge, 2004)

“Einleitung/Preface”, in: Building Paradise: Exile Architecture in California (Villa Aurora Edition, 2004)

“Anglo-German Conflict in Popular Fiction 1870–1914” in: World War One as Clash of Cultures (Camden House, 2006)

“Otto Neurath and the Sociology of Happiness”, in: The Man-Made Future: Planning, Education, and Design in Mid-Twentieth Century Britain (Routledge, 2006)

“Berlin Reconstructs”, in: Reality Bites: Making Avante- Garde Art in Post-Wall Germany (Hatje-Cantz, 2007)

“Peters and Schneider: The Drawing Board as Home”, in: Caught by Politics: Hitler Exiles and American Visual Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

“Préface”, in: La Chaîne de verre: une correspondance expressionniste (Editions de la Villette, 2009)

“Modernity, Architecture, and the City”, in: Modern Times: Responding to Chaos, exh. cat. (Kettles Yard, 2010)

“The Crystal Chain”, in The Religious Imagination in Modern and Contemporary Architecture: A Reader (Routledge, 2011)

“Elevated Thoughts on a Raised Platform / Erhabene Gedanken zu einer erhobenen Ebene”, in: Antony Gormley: Horizon Field Hamburg, exh. cat. (Snoek, 2012), 

“Foreword”, in: Colour Strategies in Architecture / Farbstrategien in der Architektur, exh. cat. trans. (Schwabe Verlag, 2015) 

“National Socialism, Classicism, and Architecture”, in: Brill Companion to the Classics, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

“Otto Wagners ‘Moderne’ Jenseits der Doppelmonarchie”, in: Otto Wagner, exh. cat. (Wien Museum/Residenz Verlag, 2018)

“The Gains and Losses of Translation”, in: Proceedings of 34th World Congress of Art History, Beijing, 2016 (Commercial Press Beijing, 2019)

“Appropriation”, in: Field Notes on the Visual Arts (Intellect, 2019)

“Cumbernauld: Scotland’s Model New Town”, in: Modernity and Its Historical Process in Landscape and Environment (Sangensha Tokyo, 2020)

“Architecture and Fashion in fin-de-siécle Vienna”, in: The Detective of Modernity: Essays on the Work of David Frisby (Routledge, 2021)

“Constructing Mythologies of the Germanen in Nineteenth and Twentieth- Century Germany”, in: Cultural Mythologies around 1900 (Finnish National Gallery, 2020)

Exhibition curation

Co-curator of the Council of Europe exhibition Art and Power, shown at Hayward Gallery, London; Centre de Cultura Contemporània, Barcelona; and Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin in 1996/97.

Darwin’s Edinburgh, Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, 24 October — 12 December 2009.

Broadcasting (very select!)

Top Gear, Series 9, Episode 2, BBC2, 4 February 2007, on the design of coupés